Tohnee Skaht snorted in disgust and spat into the fire. “Dammit anyway—if we break trade peace—” “Word spreads fast,” agreed his cousin Jahn. “We may have trouble getting other traders to deal with us if we mount a raid while this lot’s got the peace banners up.”
There were nearly a dozen clustered about the firepit; men and a pair of women, old and young—but all of them were seasoned raiders, regardless of age. And all of them were profoundly disappointed by the results of Daiv’s scouting foray.
“Which traders?” Tohnee asked after a long moment of thought. “Anybody mention a name or a clan you recognized?”
Daiv shook his head emphatically. “I tell you, they’re not like any lot I’ve ever seen or heard tell of. They got painted wagons, and they ain’t the big trade wagons; more, they got whole families, not just the menfolk—and they’re horse traders.”
Tohnee’s head snapped up. “Horse—”
“Before you ask, I mindspoke their horses.” This was a perfect opening for the most disturbing of Daiv’s discoveries. “This oughta curl your hair. The horses wouldn’t talk to me. It wasn’t ’cause they couldn’t, and it wasn’t ’cause they was afraid to. It was like I was maybe an enemy—was surely an outsider, and maybe not to be trusted. Whoever, whatever these folks are, they got the same kind of alliance with their horses as we have with ours. And that’s plainly strange.”
“Wind and Sun—dammit, Daiv, if I didn’t know you, I’d be tempted to call you a liar!” That was Dik Krooguh, whose jaw was hanging loose with total astonishment.
“Do the traders mindspeak?” Tohnee asked at nearly the same instant.
“I dunno,” Daiv replied, shaking his head, “I didn’t catch any of ’em at it, but that don’t mean much. My guess would be they do, but I can’t swear to it.” “I think maybe we need more facts,” Alis Skaht broke in. “If they’ve got horse brothers, I’d be inclined to say they’re not likely to be a danger to us—but we can’t count on that. Tohnee?”
“Mm.” He nodded. “Question is, how?”
“I took some thought to that,” Daiv replied. “How about just mosey in open-like? Dahnah and I could come in like you’d sent us to trade with ’em.” Dahnah was Daiv’s twin sister—an archer with no peer in the clan, and a strong mindspeaker. “We could hang around for a couple of days without making ’em too suspicious. And a pair of Horseclans kids doin’ a little dickerin’ ain’t gonna make the Dirtmen too nervous. Not while the peace banners are up.”
Tohnee thought that over awhile, as the fire cast weird shadows on his stony face. “You’ve got the sense to call for help if you end up needing it—and you’ve got Brighttooth and Stubtail backing you.”
The tw® young prairiecats lounging at Daiv’s side purred agreement.
“All right—it sounds a good enough plan to me,” Tohnee concluded, while the rest of the sobered clansfolk nodded slowly. “You two go in at first morning light and see what you can find. And I know I don’t need to tell you to be careful, but I’m telling you anyway.”
Howard Thomson, son of “King” Robert Thomson, was distinctly angered. His narrow face was flushed, always a bad sign, and he’d been drinking, which was worse. When Howard drank, he thought he owned the world. Trouble was, he was almost right, at least in this little corner of it. His two swarthy mere bodyguards were between Kevin and the doors.
Just what I didn’t need, Kevin thought bleakly, taking care that nothing but respect showed on his face, A damnfool touchy idiot with a brat’s disposition tryin’ to put me between a rock and a hard place.
“I tell you, my father sent me expressly to fetch him that blade, boy. ” Howard’s face was getting redder by the minute, matching his long, fiery hair. “You’d better hand it over now, before you find yourself lacking a hand.”
I’ll just bet he sent you, Kevin growled to himself. Sure he did. You just decided to help yourself, more like—and leave me to explain to your father where his piece went, while you deny you ever saw me before.
But his outwardly cool expression didn’t change as he replied stolidly, “Your pardon, but His Highness gave me orders that I was to put it into no one’s hands but his. And he hasn’t sent me written word telling me any different.”
Howard’s face enpurpled as Kevin obliquely reminded him that the Heir couldn’t read or write. Kevin waited for the inevitable lightning to fall. Better he should get beaten to a pulp than that King Robert’s wrath fall on Ehrik and Keegan, which it would if he gave in to Howard. What with Keegan being pregnant—better a beating. He tensed himself and waited for the order.
Except that just at the moment when Howard was actually beginning to splutter orders to his two mere bodyguards to take the blacksmith apart, salvation, in the form of Petro and a half-dozen strapping jippos, came strolling through the door to the smithy. They were technically unarmed, but the long knives at their waists were a reminder that this was only a technicality.
“Sarishan, gajo,” he said cheerfully. “We have brought you your pony.”
Only then did he seem to notice the Heir and his two bodyguards.
“Why, what is this?” he asked with obviously feigned surprise. “Do we interrupt some business?”
Howard growled something obscene—if he started something now he would be breaking trade peace, and no trader would deal with him or his family again without an extortionate bond being posted. For one moment Kevin feared that Howard’s temper might get the better of him anyway, but then the young man pushed past the jippos at the door and stalked into the street, leaving his bodyguards to follow as they would.
Kevin sagged against his cold forge, only now breaking into a sweat. “By all that’s holy, man,” he told Petro earnestly, “your timing couldn’t have been better! You saved me from a beatin’, and that’s for damn sure!”
“Something more than a beating,” the jippo replied slowly, “or I misread that one. I do not think we will sell any of our beasts there, no. But”—he grinned suddenly—“we lied, I fear. We did not bring the pony—we brought our other wares.”
“You needed six men to carry a bit of copperwork?” Kevin asked incredulously, firmly telling himself that he would not begin laughing hysterically out of relief.
“Oh no—but I was not of a mind to carry back horseshoes for every beast in our herd by myself! I am rom baro, not packmule!”
Kevin began iaughing after all, laughing until his sides hurt.
Out of gratitude for their timely appearance, he let them drive a harder bargain with him than he normally would have allowed, trading shoes and nails for their whole equipage for about three pounds of brass and copper trinkets and a set of copper pots he knew Keegan would lust after the moment she saw them. And a very pretty little set of copper jewelery to brighten her spirit; she was beginning to show, and subject to bouts of depression in which she was certain her pregnancy made her ugly in his eyes. This bit of frippery might help remind her that she was anything but. He agreed to come by and look at the pony as soon as he finished a delivery of his own. He was going to take no chances of Howard’s return; he was going to deliver that sword himself, now, and straight into Robert’s palsied hands!
“So if that one comes, see that he gets no beast nor thing of ours,” Petro concluded. “Chali, you speak to the horses. Most like, he will want the king stallion, if any.”
Chali nodded. We could say Bakro is none of ours— that he’s a wild one that follows our mares.
Petro grinned approval. “Ha, a good idea! That way nothing of blame comes on us. For the rest—we wish to leave only Pika, is that not so?”
The others gathered about him in the shade of his vurdon murmured agreement. They had done well enough with their copper and brass jewelery, ornaments and pots—and with the odd hen or vegetable or sack of grain that had found a mysterious way into a Rom kettle or a vurdon.